Pat Robertson: We Need To Put The Bankers Who Lied To Americans And Caused The Financial Crisis In Jail

Today, televangelist and long time right-wing icon Pat Robertson addressed the banking crisis on his television show, The 700 Club. Referencing how Iceland dealt with its own economic crisis — it jailed many of the bankers who broke laws and deceived the nation’s people — Robertson praised the European nation and said that we need to deal with the crimes of the financial sector here in the United States the same way. “[Iceland is] putting people in jail,” Robertson said. “They’re going after bankers there. The people said, ‘Those banks were rippin’ us off. We don’t like what they did. They brought out country to ruin. Now Iceland suddenly is turning around. Their GDP is growing. They look like a big success story. Isn’t that amazing?”

“We can start putting some of those bankers in jail,” Robertson preached. “There were all kinds of shady dealings during that financial crisis. So many people were lying….I’m not for putting people in jail…but here’s an opportunity for the people who want to enforce laws to enforce that one. There must be some laws against lying in documents!” Watch Robertson:

Of course, one reason why the banking sector has gotten away without many major prosecutions here in the United States is the role of Big Money in our politics. The financial industry was a huge donor to President Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008, with megabank Goldman Sachs coming in as his top private sector contributor. Meanwhile, the financial, real estate, and insurance sectors as a whole donated $501 million to federal candidates in the 2008 election cycle.

In Iceland, elections are publicly financed and are referred to by some as “voter owned.” As a result, the financial industry has nowhere near as political clout in the European nation. Perhaps the United States will not be able to deal out the same sort of justice that Iceland did until it, too, has a much more fair system of financing elections.

Absolutely people need to be held accountable for their actions! There is no reason at all to even have a legal system unless it can uniformly apply a set of preexisting rules to everyone equally. This financial crisis and resulting “cover up” is blatant proof that our government is not by the people or for the people. The connection you make in the article between this dysfunction and our election campaign financing system is spot on. I really appreciate the link to the article about Iceland and Sweden case studies of voter owned elections.

This is an ongoing 14 trillion dollar scam and yes many people need to be jailed and many judges disbarred for their roles. This is a complex fraud that most people simply don’t want to believe that our government and banks and servicers and insurance companies have actually conspired to defraud the public on a scale as massive as this. If you want to understand some of the issues you can read about it in my article on hubpages. Criminal issues in the mortgage servicing industry.

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